The School of Missing Men takes as it starting point the fact that 75 percent of students at BEAR are women, supposedly a norm ratio in art schools across the Netherlands and abroad. How is it then that the art-world continues to be for the most part male dominated?

As a gesture to Foucault’s School of Missing Teachers, our goal is to see how we can learn from our current situation, to see it both as a set of systemic problems to investigate as well as a series of opportunities to take hold of. Implementing initiatives across the BEAR curriculum, including lectures, workshops, screenings and a reading group, we aim to assemble, share and generate knowledge and tools for self-empowerment. The initiative begins locally, at BEAR and in collaboration with partners including departments across ArtEZ; ArtEZ Studium Generale; Mirjam Westen from Museum Arnhem; and Walter Books – eventually expanding the network to initiatives within a wider scope of concerns regarding diversity and equality.

We aim to open up the conversation through intersecting positions, allowing a variety of voices and experiences to resonate and contribute in developing knowledge, strategies and a supportive network for students both during school and after graduation.

Following Mirjam Westen’s lecture please join us for a drink with the collaborators to mark the departing point of this new initiative in the making!